Kim Cresswell - Garden of Bones--A True Crime Quickie (Book Three)

GARDEN OF BONES

THE STORY OF FRED AND ROSEMARY WEST

Kim Cresswell

Garden of Bones

The Story of Fred and Rosemary West 2015 by Kim Cresswell

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the author.

Cover Art 2015 by No Sweat Graphics

Published by KC Publishing

eBook ISBN: 978-0-9950578-0-7

First eBook Edition: February 2016

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Dedication

For Justin, Carla, Porter and Peyton

In memory of Mary Beech

Death leaves a heartache no one can heal, love leaves a memory no one can steal .

- From a headstone in Ireland

On February 24, 1994, Things Can Only Get Better by D: Ream was racing to the top of the UK dance-pop song charts. Little did the British public know that things were about to get much worse. At an average three-storey brick house in central Gloucester, secrets hidden for decades were about to be unearthed; abuse, incest, paedophilia, depravity, torture, rape, and murder. On that damp and bitterly cold Thursday afternoon, a van filled with four police officers arrived at 25 Cromwell Street at 1:45 PM looking for the owner, Fred West. They were greeted by his stocky wife, Rosemary. At the moment an officer handed her a warrant to dig up their garden, she yelled to her eldest son, Steve, Get Fred! They're going to dig up the garden, looking for Heather.

While Rose continued to scream hysterically for her husband, an hour passed and still there was no sign of Fred West, even though a phone message was left at his workplace at Carson Contractors. In the meantime, a small group of officers dressed in blue protective overalls began lifting the heavy patio slabs at the bottom of the garden. When Steve was finally able to get a hold of his father by cell phone, Fred was eerily calm. He told his frantic son not to worrythat he was on his way. At 4 PM, daylight faded and large lamps were brought in to illuminate the garden. As the police team used a small mechanical digger and dug a hole at the furthest point from the house, Rose and the older children kept watch from an upstairs window. After searching for about an hour and finding nothing but a chicken bone, work stopped at the site for the day. When Fred arrived home just before 6 PM, he offered no explanation as to where he had been. Had he spent the last four hours contemplating the situation and how he was going to handle it?

He decided to drive to the police department where he spoke with Hazel Savage, a veteran Detective Constable who was experienced in investigations involving women and children. The dark-haired, man complained that the police were harassing him, wanting to put him back in prison on another false charge. He said that he and his wife, Rose, had no idea where Heather was. Lots of girls disappear, he explained, take a different name and go into prostitution. He claimed that Heather was a lesbian who had some major problems with drugs.

Meanwhile, Rose was being interviewed back at the house, and told a very similar story. Heather had disappeared in 1987 at the age of 16. According to Rose, the young girl had run away before. She described her daughter as difficult and repeated the story about Heather being a lesbian.

The next morning, fearing that the police would find his daughter's remains, Fred admitted to Constable Savage that he had killed her. When he arrived at the police station, he described in detail how he had cut Heather's body into three pieces and buried them, repeating over and over that Rose had known nothing about the murder. Then, less than a half hour later, he changed his story and denied everything.

Heather's alive and well, right. She's possibly in Bahrain working for a drug cartel. She had a Mercedes, a chauffeur, and a new birth certificate. He assured the police they could dig all they wanted, but they would not find her.

As dawn stretched across Gloucester, the team of diggers, now dressed in bright yellow overalls with their hoods raised against the pouring rain, returned to resume their work in hopes of finding Heather West. It wouldn't be long before they unearthed what they were looking forand more than they ever imagined.

After several hours of digging failed to produce Heather's grave, the police decided to broaden the search area. While exploring another spot near the back door of the house close to the old church wall, the officers stumbled upon what appeared to be a piece of human bone. But since Gloucester was built on Roman burial grounds, and given the fact that the bone was discovered alone and away from the original search area, it wasn't deemed important enough to move from the main digging site at the back of the garden. Later that afternoon, a second hole was excavated on the left side of the patio near some fir trees. Two feet down, a team member spotted a large brown object. After Professor Knight, a scientist, cautiously washed the muck from the object, he identified it as a femurdiscolored from years of being buried in the ground. The freshly dug pit stank of death, the smell swirling in a revolving bouquet of decomposing human flesh and bodily organs mixed within the dirt. Upon closer inspection, the searchers discovered a heap of bones in a small cavity less than a foot across. Under the ribs were fragments of a black bin bag and large teeth; clumps of hair lay not far from a skull. They also recovered fingernails and two lengths of rope.

Back at Gloucester police department, the bones were examined by Professor Knight. He confirmed that they belonged to a young woman who had been dismembered and decapitated prior to being buried. Knight noted that it was odd that the kneecaps and several bones from the hands and foot were missing. Later that day, it was established that the bone shard found by the back door of the house was indeed human, and did not belong to the main skeleton of the young woman. It was then that the police realized there might be more than one body buried in the Wests' garden

* * *

Fredrick Walter Stephen West was born to Walter and Daisy West on September 29, 1941 in Much Marclea small town nestled in the Herefordshire countryside, surrounded by green pastures, golden cornfields, and apple orchards. Having lost a baby girl who had been born prematurely the year before, Walter and Daisy were thrilled to behold their beautiful baby boy, with his straw-yellow hair and eyes the color of sapphires.

Over the next decade, Daisy would give birth to six more children; John, David (who died a month after birth from a heart defect), Elizabeth (known as Little Daisy), Douglas, Kitty, and Gwen.

Out of all the children, Fred was Daisy's favorite and her pride toward the little boy was evident to everyone in the community. Over time, it would cause jealousy and fights among the other children. To her, little Freddie was precious. She would take him to bed with her every night, cuddling and caressing him. To most people, the bond between Fred and Daisy seemed unnatural. According to Daisy's sister-in-law, Edna Hill, Fred came first with Daisy, even in front of Walter.

In July 1946, the family moved back to Moorcourt Cottage where Fred had been born. They lived in immense poverty without electricity or gas and with toilet facilities consisting of nothing more than a bucket. As Fred grew, he inherited his mother's ample mouth along with a gap between his front teeth. His hair turned from blond to dark brown with bushy unkempt curls. During his school years, he was not considered a particularly bright student, and was constantly in trouble. On many occasions, his mother would march into the schoolhouse and scream at his teacher for disciplining her pride and joy. Because of her routine involvement, the other students would mock and bully him. According to his younger brother, Doug, Fred was mammy's blue-eyed boy and could do no wrong, as she always took Fred's side in squabbles involving the other children. As a result of Daisy's coddling, Fred grew to be a spoilt and introverted child.